There and Back Again
by The Tardis Blue Impala
Summary: "No, I didn't even watch Lord of the Rings," Emma had told Elsa truthfully. But stories about people finding home against impossible odds and overcoming unbeatable burdens were perfect for a kid lost in the system, and when Emma was young, she knew those stories cover to cover.


**AN: Hello, lovely readers, and welcome! Remember that scene in Sunday's episode (The Snow Queen on November 9th) where Elsa's like - "Can you read this?" about that scroll and Emma says "Elvish? No, I didn't even watch Lord of the Rings"? Remember that scene? Well, that scene inspired this little beauty that spiraled out of my control a lil bit. **

**There are mentions of Anti-Neal and hints at Captain Swan, but the focus of this is Emma and her childhood.**

**I don't own Once Upon a Time or any of the books mentioned in this story. If I did, I wouldn't be worried about overpriced mandatory housing at my university next year. **

**Enjoy!**

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><p>Emma had always been a bright kid. Despite her patchy education that came from bouncing from school to school, she still managed to do pretty well when she was young, especially in reading. Emma had been an early reader. While she wasn't always in the same place as the rest of her class in math and sometimes she'd end up in science classes that were learning about things she wasn't even close to learning, no matter where she went, there were books. Books were a constant. From a young age, Emma realized that and clung to books, reading whatever she could wherever she could find it.<p>

It really started when she was seven. Two weeks into her time with the Anderson family, she found a book called _The Hobbit_ on their bookshelf. She had liked the cover - a pretty drawing of a mountain in greens and blues. Emma plucked the book from the shelf and snuck it up to her shared room where started reading.

"In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit."

She finished it in a week. She had trouble with some of the tougher words and she had been confused by some of the stuff at the end, but she liked it, especially the dwarves. They were like her - they didn't have a home either.

When the day came for her to leave the Anderson family, she took _The Hobbit_ with her. She put it in the bottom of her backpack, covered by her baby blanket. Seven year old Emma read that book over and over again, every time understanding more of it, and every time finding new things to love about the characters. She kept that book with her, always packed in her little red backpack right under her baby blanket.

That book was her safe place, her escape.

Eight year old Emma pulled it out whenever she heard Mr. and Mrs. Franklin arguing downstairs, hoping that maybe if she sang the Misty Mountains song loud enough in her head, it would drown out their shouting. Nine-year-old Emma turned to the company of fourteen when she was bullied by Adrienne Scott and her friends, hoping that Bilbo and the dwarves might cheer her up.

She still had hope back then, and most of it came from that book. If the dwarves were able to find their home, maybe one day she would too.

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><p>When Emma was ten years old, she still had her battered copy of <em>The Hobbit<em> she stole from the Andersons. That was, until Ben Zimmerman stole it from her one thursday at recess. She fought for her precious book - she kicked him in the shins and scratched at his arms, but Ben held it over her head - out of her reach - and ripped the fragile paperback right down the spine. Emma cried herself to sleep that night.

The next day, she asked Mrs. Iverson if she could come along to the library with her and get a library card. Emma's temporary caretaker reluctantly agreed, and at the library, Emma went to find herself a new copy of the Hobbit to read. She went to the fantasy section and searched the Ts, looking for the familiar cover. To her dismay, she couldn't find it. On the shelf, just above her head, were the books written by Tolkien, but there was no Hobbit. Instead, there were copies of three titles - the Fellowship of the Ring, the Two Towers, and the Return of the King. Emma had found the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Ten-year-old Emma read the dust jacket of the Fellowship of the Ring, and was sold. She pulled a copy of each book from the shelf and checked out all three books under her own name. Much like when she was seven and found the Hobbit, ten-year-old Emma devoured the trilogy. Also like when she read the Hobbit for the first time, there were words she didn't know and parts she didn't understand very well, but she loved them all the same.

She had gotten through the Fellowship of the Ring and was a few chapters into the Two Towers when the time came for a new house and a new group home. The Forsyth Public Library never got those books back.

Those borrowed books replaced the Hobbit as Emma's glimmer of hope. They reminded her that sure, things may seem bad, but that no matter how bad it got, "this too shall pass." They were something for her to hold on to when things got particularly hard. She would bury her nose in the pages, escaping into the story. She saw herself in Frodo, dealing with the worst of burdens. She hoped to one day be like Aragorn, rising from a scruffy outcast to a beloved king. She wanted to be like Éowyn, her favorite character, punching back at the world she lived in and showing them who she really was. Emma held tight to those books, and whenever she moved, they were in the bottom of her backpack, under her baby blanket.

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><p>Things started to change shortly before Emma's twelfth birthday. One of the little girls in her group home got adopted. The family came to pick her up and gave her a stuffed animal. Emma could tell just by watching them that the couple loved the little girl already. They would give her a home.<p>

That was the day that Emma started to lose hope. She was too old, too bitter, for anyone to adopt her. Who on earth would even _consider_ adopting a twelve year old girl?

Emma tried turning to her books, but not even the end, reading about the hobbits reclaiming the Shire, could spark any hope in her. She started to open her books less and less. They started to feel like dead weight in the bottom of her backpack under her baby blanket, dead weight there just to remind her of how hopeless it all was.

She tried running away when she was fourteen. She met Lily. Lily rekindled the hope for belonging and happiness that Emma thought had been long extinguished. That was, until Emma found out that Lily had lied to her. She _lied,_ and that fact was like a wet blanket, snuffing out that spark.

Emma was sixteen when her most recent caregiver, Mrs. Campbell, decided shed had enough of the surly, moody, teen. Mrs. Campbell, who had actually been nicer than most of the others, didn't want her anymore, and that was the final straw. Sixteen-year-old Emma had had enough. She was done. Done with constantly moving, done with "caregivers" that only saw her as a meal ticket, done with the system. On October 27th, 1999, four days after her sixteenth birthday, Emma decided she was going to run away. She went to bed early that night and changed into jeans, boots, and a sweatshirt before starting to pack her backpack.

Emma lingered with the Fellowship of the Ring in her hands for a long while, debating whether or not her books would make the cut. She could bring them, take up valuable space in her bag and weigh herself down, or leave them behind. She could bring her precious books or abandon them. Finally, she set the hardcover down on her nightstand and stacked the others on top. They wouldn't do anything for her now. She was beyond hoping, and she was taking her life into her own hands. She didn't need those books to remind her of that foolish hope she used to cling to. Emma stuffed her baby blanket in the bottom of her bag, followed by her old camcorder, a spare pare of shoes, and some clothes. She slipped on the leather jacket she won when Ally Henson bet she wouldn't make out with Jeremy Daughtry, and climbed out the window.

In the morning, all that was left of Emma in that house were school supplies, a few oversized t-shirts, and three long overdue books from the Forsyth Public Library.

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><p>Looking down at that stupid plastic stick with its stupid pink result made Emma feel almost numb. Pregnant. She was fucking pregnant. Neal had not only left her to rot in jail but he had to go and leave a little something behind with her. <em>Pregnant.<em> That jackass had knocked her up. How could she ever have been so stupid to hope for a home with him - an escape from the shithole that was her old life? Clearly, someone was out to get her - fate, God, the damn Valar for all she knew. For the first time in years, Emma found herself thinking about those books from the Forsyth Public Library. She could hardly believe how naïve she'd been, looking for _hope_ in the pages of a book. So much for that.

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><p>When Emma got out, she heard that they'd made a movie out of the Fellowship of the Ring and that the Two Towers was coming out soon. A tiny part of her wanted to see the movies, but it was overshadowed by her bitterness. She didn't need that anymore. She was going to deal with the shitty world she lived in and she was <em>not<em> going to indulge in false hope.

A year and some change later, she saw the trailer for the Return of the King, and she was tempted to see it just for Éowyn killing the Witch-King, but she stopped herself. She was an adult now. She could handle herself without any of that.

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><p>For the next few years, those books from the Forsyth Public Library barely crossed her mind. Emma got a job as a bail bonds person, moved to Boston, and by the time she was twenty-seven, she had a nice apartment all to herself. It was on her twenty-eighth birthday that it her life got turned upside down. Things hardly ever stopped since that day.<p>

She met her kid, moved in with his teacher, became a sheriff, fought a dragon, broke a curse, and found her _parents_. She climbed a beanstalk, fought zombies, giants, and Captain Hook (she won against all of them), reconnected with her sorry excuse for an ex, and discovered she had magic. She went to Neverland, rescued her son from Peter Pan, sacrificed ten years of her memories for a year, nearly married a flying monkey, fought the Wicked Witch of the West, pulled a Marty McFly, and fell for a one-handed pirate to boot.

She had barely even spared a thought for the three books from the Forsyth Public Library until Elsa asked her about that scroll.

"Can you read this?" she'd asked.

"Elvish?" Emma had replied, raising an eyebrow skeptically. "I didn't even watch Lord of the Rings," she'd said truthfully. Feelings and memories from those damn books rushed to the forefront of her mind, and Emma did her best to push them back for the moment. There was work to be done. The rest of the day, and for a long while afterwards, the trilogy stayed there, in the back of her mind, until one day, long after things had settled down, Henry dragged her along with him to the library.

Henry dashed off towards the mystery section, leaving Emma to wander. Her feet took her through the nonfiction shelves, the kiddy section, and the young adult fiction before she found herself in the fantasy shelves. It was eerily reminiscent to Emma, like she was ten years old again. She took a deep breath and started scanning the author names, looking for the Ts.

She found them all right, and her eyes went straight to an achingly familiar cover featuring a blue and green illustration of a mountain. Emma's hands shook as she reached for the book and plucked it from the shelf. For awhile, Emma just looked at it and ran her fingers over the embossed print on the dust jacket. _The Hobbit._ Emma barely even registered turning to lean back against the shelf as she continued to look over the familiar cover. It took a while, but finally, she opened it up.

"In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit."

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><p><strong>Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it! If you did, tell me why in a review! <strong>

**Also, I am thinking about possibly expanding this into a two-chapter piece. Thoughts?**

**If any of you are on tumblr, check out my OUAT blog: thegoodshipcaptainswan**

**That's all I've got for today, thanks so much for reading!**


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